


Dead Energy

by asentia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, One Shot, POV Third Person, Secrets, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asentia/pseuds/asentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malfoy & Sons have discovered a cutting-edge but controversial new energy source and one certain fiancée decides to further complicate the new technology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Energy

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 020. Any Fandom -- energy company rpf: Zombies are the new renewable resource, 100% predictable, they'll keep running on that treadmill until their legs wear down to nothing... but how do we get enough of 'em...

The plaque that said 'Malfoy Manor' was embossed in gold lettering on black marble and had a small border of diamonds. The thing probably cost thousands of dollars and there were little hack marks around the edges that showed meager attempts to peel off the absolutely pretentious thing.

Astoria Greengrass smirked. It was her kind of joint.

Even though it was modern Wizarding times and almost anyone could cast a simple Anti-Apparition ward, the minted bastards still kept an alpine wrought iron fence with golden tips and a fancy, cursive gold M plastered on at intervals. The gates swung open soundlessly and the aristocratic woman glided into the Malfoy estate. The grounds were crowded with albino peacocks and smelled acrid. There were deep ruts in grass and claw marks everywhere. Astoria shuddered.

Finally at the towering door, she knocked. It swung open immediately and the house smelled bitter and dead, like the mass graves that had sprouted up everywhere during the Second Wizarding War. There were more claw marks that disrupted the otherwise spotless marble tiles and here and there were spots of something that looked disturbingly like dried blood.

"Sorry for the mess," Lucius Malfoy said, appearing out of thin air and clutching his pimp stick as per usual. Hanging on the crook of his elbow was an emaciated girl with green-greyish skin, thin pouting lips, and half-closed eyes. If you went past her whole corpse-like appearance, she was actually quite pretty, with greasy black hair, drag queen makeup, and a multitude of scabs all over her barely-clothed body. Astoria held in a laugh. This was her competition? Ha! The girl was uglier than Sara Prewett from Charm School! She didn't have a single redeemable quality (unless skeleton-like boniness was desirable) and she smelled like overcooked eggs.

Astoria smile primly as she gagged mentally in her head and blinked furiously to keep tears from leaking out of her painstakingly eyelined eyes.

"I forgot that you were coming today," said Lucius. He gestured to the zombie-like bird on his arm. "This is my test sub- tester. Product tester." The product tester made no motion to show that she even noticed Astoria. "Draco's downstairs working so try not to be too seductive or you'll distract him."

Pfft. As if she had any more work to do! Malfoy Jr. was wrapped around her pinkie, along with his money.

"Great seeing you, Mr. Malfoy!" Astoria chirped, before nearly running downstairs to escape her future father-in-law's creepy pimp looks.

If the previous level smelled like a horrible mixture of burned eggs and trash cans, then Draco's office was downright _foul_. It smelled like corpses and festering flesh and the infected wounds that had made Astoria quit her job at St. Mungo's.

"Hi, Draco," Astoria said, confidently sauntering toward the desk and maybe extending her willowy legs a bit more than usual. Her fiancé looked up with surprise then slammed his binder shut and jumped up from his chair before she could see what he was reading.

"I didn't know you were visiting today," Draco said, pursing his lips. "We're about to test some of our products so-"

"We? There's no one else here," Astoria pointed out. She glared at her fiancé. "Are you doing animal testing again?"

"No, of course not!" Draco sputtered. "We're testing a new energy source that is potentially dangerous so you need to-"

"AARGHHH!"

The couple snapped their heads toward a slender woman with long brown hair and skin tinged green-grey like Mr. Malfoy's escort. Draco swore and Astoria gawked.

"Is that KATE BECKINSALE?" she cried. "I love her!"

"Who's Kate Beckinsale? Actually, never mind. Astoria, go upstairs. Kate, come here," Draco snapped, roughly grabbing Kate's wrist and pushing her through the door she had come from. Astoria didn't move.

"Why is Kate Beckinsale in your basement?" Astoria asked coldly.

"She's a product tester."

"You said you're testing an energy source, not a product."

"For the love of Bagshilda, _go upstairs!_ " Draco screamed. Astoria scowled and turned to go back up the stairs but suddenly, she twisted around and ran through the door Kate went through. Her fiancé screamed after her but she was already across the threshold.

"Moldy mother of Merlin," Astoria gasped. A warm hand grabbed her wrist weakly and Draco spluttered profusely beside her.

Dozens of green-grey-tinged people were sprinting on treadmills, wheezing, moaning and sobbing. Their hoarse cries displayed crude rows of decaying teeth and most of the runners had gaping wounds covered in puss and liquid streaming out of their noses and mouths. Suddenly there was a loud snap from the front of the room and a runner groaned, picking up its left calf that had _fallen off._ The man (who looked suspiciously like that Muggle Piers Morgan) kept on running with his other leg while trying to reattach his limb. He wasn't green-grey at all but extremely pale instead. Several others in the giant warehouse-like room were also sickly pale but not dead like the others.

Astoria felt a rush of warmth flood through her body and suddenly realized she had been shivering.

"Sorry it's so cold," Draco muttered. Astoria stared at her fiancé for a long moment.

_Slap!_

"You disgusting little slimeball," Astoria spat. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"They're _zombies_ , why would I tell anyone?" said Draco.

"Other than your dad."

"He came up with the idea to use zombies. _My_ idea was to make some sort of machine that would keep the treadmills running so we can use the friction created as energy."

"So is this your new secret energy source?" Astoria asked, extremely curious. Sure, they were dead and smelled terrible and looked rather disturbing but it was smart and cost-effective! Draco looked surprised by her sudden change in demeanor but quickly rearranged his features into a self-satisfied Smirk Face, haughty eyebrows and all.

"Yes. Per day, they produce enough energy to sustain Christmas lights around the Gherkin for a whole month. In total, one zombie runs 1000 km every 24 hours and after they get 24 hours of recomp."

"Recomp?" Astoria squeaked, glancing at Piers Morgan who had managed to reattach his calf.

"Recomposition basically," Draco explained with pride. "This room is kept exactly at 2 degrees Celsius to avoid extreme decomposition but after exerting so much energy, they're bound to heat up and bones might snap, like that bloke over there." He pointed at Piers. "The recomp room is kept below zero and they literally chill out. Recomp takes 0.25% longer after each session because the limbs are raw so soon the bodies get exhausted and we have to dispose of them, which is a rather messy process since they're already dead-"

"How do you get them?" Astoria asked.

"P- Pardon?" Draco stuttered.

"How do you get the zombies? Do you kill people?" Astoria asked, her face curious and devoid of any fear or disgust.

"Um, well, we basically get random, depressed, lonely Muggles off the street."

"Kate Beckinsale and Piers Morgan seemed _lonely_?"

"Who?"

"Never mind." 

Draco's face lit up suddenly. "Hey, would you like to come with me on a Zombie-Fetching Mission?"

Astoria looked at him skeptically. "Is that hygienic?"

"You can shower after. And it's just in Mayfair."

Astoria sighed dramatically then stood up and headed toward the door. "Let's do this."

*

Malfoy and the Malfoy-to-be sat in Draco's inconspicuous BMW in a Harrod's carpark, scanning the shoppers.

"Normally you want to find someone no one will miss," Draco stated. He pointed at a young woman, caked with bright, smudged makeup, who was carrying at least six giant shopping bags by herself. "My associates and I usually fetch materialists. Their credit card is the only thing that will be missed."

A young handsome man with fair skin and unnatural black hair was standing against the wall near the double-doors, his shiny telephone held loosely in his other hand.

"That bloke over there could be talking or messaging his friends or family with his phone, but he isn't," Draco pointed out. "No one will miss him." He pulled out his wand and muttered a spell. Satisfied, he patted Astoria on the knee reassuringly then aimed at the Muggle man then the woman with the many shopping bags. " _Imperio._ Now, you two, come and get into the car and act like we're good friends."

The man walked over to them, smiling but his eyes were lackluster, and dropped into the backseat. "Hi, I'm Dan."

"I'm Iggy," said the woman with a toss of her long platinum blonde hair.

"This is Astoria and I'm Draco. We'll be taking you to your new living accommodations, courtesy of Malfoy & Sons so buckle up and don't draw attention to yourselves."

*

Astoria gawked at the shopping bags that girl Iggy had been carrying. There was a little black dress worth more than 4,500 quid, a pair of towering Giuseppe Zanotti platform heels that had golden claws for ankle bands, and a Givenchy perfume that was £1,400.

Iggy and the other future zombie, Dan, were sitting in Draco's office while he interrogated them and Astoria went through their belongings.

"I'm a singer and model," Iggy said with an Australian accent.

"I make videos and put them on the internet," Dan replied.

Draco swiveled around in his Special Edition Merlin Office Swivel Chair and grinned at Astoria. "Relatively unimportant people. Neither of them have important government jobs or connections to the Wizarding world."

"Are you sure?" Astoria said tentatively. "The Iggy girl is gorgeous. She probably has a boyfriend."

"She has an ex but they don't talk that often; I asked," Draco said, sticking his head into a manila folder and scribbling furiously in it.

"How long does it take to change them?"

Draco looked up and smiled. "Here, I'll show you. Dan, Iggy, follow me."

The four of them left the office, walked down the hall (Astoria took notice of Iggy's confident strut in her mile-high Louboutins), then entered a large sterile room with pristine silver and white tiles, a long counter covered in steaming cauldrons, and metal bunk frames covered in thin paper. Lucius Malfoy was wearing a black lab coat and poring over a vial when Draco cleared his throat. The elder Malfoy looked up and made a beeline toward Astoria.

"Draco informed me of the new addition to the Malfoy & Sons workforce," he said, smiling cordially and holding his gloved hand out to shake. Astoria took it and noticed that his hands were cold as ice. "Before we start, I'll have to perform some precautionary spells. Could you turn around?" Astoria did as she was told and faced Draco, who narrowed his eyes at his father then gave a barely perceptible nod. Astoria opened her mouth to ask what he was confirming when a word was whispered and a warm jet of air hit her back then everything went fuzzy then black.

*

The younger Malfoy stood over Astoria's body while the older one seated the two Muggles on different cots.

"What do you recommend we do with her?" asked Lucius while he Transfigured the subjects' clothing into black hospital gowns. It was much easier to get blood out of dark cloth.

"I'm bringing her to the summer house and telling her she fainted when she entered my office because the energy source I was testing went haywire."

"Turning her into an animated corpse would be much more foolproof."

Draco narrowed his eyes at his father. "No. She is my fiancée and I'd rather not go through the process of finding another one."

Lucius turned back to the Muggle named Dan and began to prod him with his wand. "Don't blame me when this blows up and shoots you in the rump."

"Ah, good on you, father, using Muggle sayings. Times are really changing."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that! I'll probably continue it but it'll become a Dramione fic because that's my OTP :)


End file.
